Working at PETCO — Reviews by Employees

"At petco, animals always come first." With this announcement every hour, interrupting the terrible 80s-90's music that played consistently on the stores pa system, it was a hint that you had take care of the animals and check on them to make sure they're ok. However -- nobody ever did. You were trained from day one, on a computer, to sit and watch videos over and over on training that was completely irrelevant to what you did on the sales floor. Let's face it, the videos you see in most retail businesses are always over the top anyway. None of the stuff that happened in the video (customer satisfaction and animal care) actually happened in the store. Day in and day out, you had a manager (for me -- it was always one of them) that treated you like complete dirt. You're not any lower than they are, as a human being -- so why get treated like one?

What's worse is that, the hours you requested to work -- were never given to you. You con constantly tell them, you can work an "X" amount of hours -- but were given the opposite. The discounts aren't even a mere factor of a job perk, because your discounts were 20% and 10% of that was basically tax -- so your discount just sucked to begin with. There's always an angry customer or two, and nobody is really "taken care of" in terms of, "the customer is always right." It would get quite busy at this store, and there was always under staffing. Nobody was around to help, and you were constantly moving from one department, to another, in order to assist and try to help out. Never was I properly trained to handle any of the animals, nor was I trained to help animals that needed special care -- due to their sickness. I've never had a bad experience at a job, to a point where I constantly complained and had to quit as quickly as I started. I wouldn't recommend this job to anyone who loves animals, because the truth is -- the people there do not. Your pay isn't very good either, as most retail jobs only stick you at minimum wage, and the respect of the upper management/employers aren't usually the best either.

I have worked here since about January 2010, and its okay. The hiring manager picks favorites. Our Store manager is pretty nice. As far as co-workers go, were pretty much a family. There are a few people though that get hired that have no clue what their doing, they quit usually within a month or two. On register, its kind of stupid that we have to answer the phone while ringing up/trying to help guests. Other than that, i dont mind working for this company. If you have any pets you save money working here.They also give us free coupons all the time. The only thing that sucks now though is they are giving us all bank cards with our checks on them now if you dont have direct deposit.

Oh yea and all the training is in video form, and you learn nothing.

Personally, I love working at Petco. Although I work in the grooming salon, I can see the way our management is run. I have two wonderful bosses who do in fact praise their employees' great work and efforts. Just last month we had a meeting over how wonderful our staff is doing and to keep it up.

Though I gave low ratings for the pay, it's minimum wage as it would be at other corporations of the same type. In the grooming salon, there is no pay increase because as bathers, we only have the opportunity for higher paychecks if we commission out or if we decide we would like to become a groomer. However, moving out to the floor has room for pay increase, promotions, and movement into management positions.

My coworkers have become great friends and honestly, I have no complaints about my Petco. In saying this, I understand where some other reviewers are coming from who have reviewed Petco negatively. I actually take a longer commute to where I work than one that is closer to me. It is small, less clean, and staff is hard to come around. Our Petco is completely the opposite. We have one of the biggest Petco's in our metro and love to keep our high reputation by making all of our clients happy. Not only do we have high standings with customers, but corporate management as well. It definitely keeps us pushing for better.

I am sorry some of your views were skewed by horrible experiences as previous Petco retails. Please know, a great majority are not that bad. Thanks for reading my review!

PetCo is a terrible company to work for. The people that work there have no respect for people and refuse to train you. The managers don't care about the employees. I could not stand working there for more than a month.

PetCo is a terrible company to work for. The people that work there have no respect for people and refuse to train you. The managers don't care about the employees. I could not stand working there for more than a month.

I was so excited to work at PETCO. I love animals and thought it seemed like a cool job. The employees at my PETCO were very very friendly and welcoming, and when I did indeed get a job there, I liked mostly all of them. What I didn't like was how things were run. You were never complimented for something you had done correctly or very well (except one manager, I really really liked him). You were always lectured for things, and told to do something even if you were in the middle of it. I was a cashier, and I was not allowed to leave the register area. This is very difficult when there are only a few people scheduled. It would usually be one cashier, one manager, one person in aquatics, and one person on the floor.. unless they were doing dog training. If you did say "fuck it" and leave the register area to help the customer.. the customer ended up happy, but your manager ended up pissed and you were yelled at for it. One time I was helping a customer at the end of the night, after having paged for help from another associate for a LONG TIME, there was an angry page over the loud system that I needed to come back to the register immediately. Granted there was a line up front, but what the hell was I supposed to do? Tell the customer "No, sorry I can't help you even though at this moment in time I am just standing here." Argh.
They were very pushy with donations. I don't mind asking for donations.. I think it's great they are collecting for pet cancer research, money for homeless pets, etc etc... but they HARASS you constantly about it. I had one manager who was a little over zealous about it. I knew he knew it made me uncomfortable, but I don't think he cared that much. He was a nice guy otherwise, I just hated how he would constantly ask me about donations. He would have me recite how I asked about the donations, and then tell me to change how I said it. Another manager would do the same thing, and then go ahead and suggest I say it another way. I must have had 5 or 6 different lines that I was to say during the duration of donations. There was also a new donation constantly. After one would end, another would start. They would constantly ask you how you were doing on your donations... they didn't care that you were getting money for the great causes listed about, they cared about being the best in the district and making the store look good. The customers would get really sick of you asking them for donations and would regularly say "I donated to the last one" or "I donated the last time I was in here." A lot of times people were in a rush and you had all of this shit to spout off to them. I know that one of my co workers, who is really great at his job and works his ass off, forgot to ask one customer for a donation and he was threatened with cut hours. He had the most donations out of all of the employees and he wasn't even a cashier.
The hours were not steady at all. One week you could have twenty hours, the next you could have 6. Never a steady schedule. Getting off cash register was ridiculously difficult. An employee told me that he had been on register for almost a year before I had been hired. Now he was allowed off register when I was present, otherwise he was on there. I took my time cleaning the animal cages (I didn't do it often, so I was new, and didn't want to mess up... nor did I want to hurt the animals in the process) and I was reprimanded for that. I can understand if I was standing around and what not, but I had only done it a few times and was doing quite a thorough job.
Job training is abysmal. You get sighs or annoyed looks if you ask too many questions.. like you should know everything right away. Once I was asked if I could bring a bunch of children around the store.. I had never done it before. I said okay and I had no idea what to say. Finally someone who had done it many times stepped in and rescued me. They had given me no notice.. the kids were outside when they asked me.
I got really frustrated with this job and felt bad for quitting.. I had only been there maybe 4 months.. but I couldn't handle it anymore. I came home stressed out every single day from working. I don't miss working there at all... the only thing I miss are my co workers..
Don't work at PETCO if you can help it.
The surveys were also annoying. You had to basically tell the customer to give you all 5's because if you get anything less than a 5 it does not count. Isn't that ridiculous? You also have to get as many voice mail mentions as possible.. it's really awkward to ask a customer to leave your name on a voice mail when all you've done is rung them out.

Petco is one of the best companies I have ever worked for! The benefits are great and you get tons of paid time off. The potential to grow with the company is there for those who want it! As an animal lover, Petco is a great place to work. At Petco animals really do come first!
I worked in the Hanover location among other locations and I can easily say the Hanover store was the best! Darryl Sampson was the GM and he is by far the best manager I have ever had! I learned the most from him than any other manager I have ever worked with. He gave me the opportunity and skills needed to grow with the company. The rest of the management staff was also awesome!
Petco even has stores called Unleashed by Petco. All I can say is awesome!!! What a great idea!

Petco (Store 2707- Hanover) as managed by Darryl Sampson, Christina Brown, and Amanda (whatever the fuck her last name was), was far and away the most abysmal workplace I ever endured. I've had many jobs, but none of them sucked quite as badly as this one did. I was constantly rushed by management when it came to issues like animal care. Darryl once bleached a focal tank for a visit from higher ups, and ended up killing off 36 cichlids ( large ones, the kind that sell for $35 a pop). He turned around and hung it on my coworker (and my) head, saying that we didn't have the tank clean enough, so the fish died off... more like you used fucking bleach on their substrate and didn't wash it off well enough.

There were so many blatant violations in the adoption / isolation area that were always swept under the rug when higher-ups came around. What amazed me most about the job there, is that they were so expertly able to hide all these violations from the public. Overcrowded habitats with animals literally killing one another, adoption / isolation being horribly neglected.

There is no happy ending to this story either, Darryl got promoted to DM / Gm of Petco Unleashed in Duxbury Ma, despite a list of complaints against him well over a mile long-- Everything from sexual harassment to misconduct, to animal rights violations. When you're close with the DM / Regional, it doesn't matter what you fuck up.

THERE IS NO STUCTURE WORKING THERE.I WAS LUCKY TO EVEN GET A LUNCH BREAK.

I was a Dept manager. They do not train their employees properly. They do not fairly delegate managers workloads. 3/4 of the workload was dumped on myself and another supervisor and the other 3 or 4 managers would sit on their asses and complain of everybody else's performance. The GM was arrogant and demeaning, he refused to take constructive criticisms, even in situations where I could prove a more efficient procedure or even when I explained he was going against policy. He would micromanage all employees to the point where I couldn't get assistance in my tasks and I ended up doing most of the work myself. Petco does not provide enough hours for everything they want done to be accomplished safely and efficiently. They would always cut back associates hours midweek due to poor scheduling. The list goes on and on, if you love animals work for an independent pet store. Actually, fact if you care about animals or people avoid this place all together.